A networked lighting system typically includes a group of luminaires, lighting sensors, and motion sensors interconnected together in a communication network. The communication network may be wired or RF technology, for example. Networked lighting systems are typically installed in large buildings, such as offices, retail stores, airports, stadiums, hospitals, etc.
A lighting control system is generally employed to control the luminaires in premise or remotely, control based on information (e.g., intensity level status information) sensed by the sensors, like daylight harvesting, motion based control. There are also maintenance and monitoring aspects e.g. energy monitoring, failure monitoring. The luminaires are incorporated into the lighting control system by the performance of a commissioning process. The commissioning process is the process of setting up the networked lighting system by matching previously given digital random addresses to the exact physical location of the lamps and defining a desired operation by associating switches and sensors with the luminaires such that the luminaires are operated individually or in groups by specific switches and sensors while the overall network is managed by a controller.
The devices (i.e., luminaires, switches and sensors) may be assigned network addresses to receive and perform command signals from the controller. The commissioning process further involves mapping the location of the physical components on a building layout with the network addresses.
In existing commissioning processes, an operator may install the devices, then manually record the network address of each fixture on the building layout, and connect all the devices. The operator has to walk around several times to find the endpoint (i.e., the luminaire). The operator manually enters network addresses assigned to the devices into a database and defines the control functions to be implemented. The manual process can be very time-consuming and expensive. As the number of luminaires in a building increases, the complexity of the commissioning process can increase.